Dollar Pancakes/Blueberries with Turmeric...

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Dollar Pancakes/Blueberries with Turmeric...

Postby patty » Sun Mar 26, 2017 2:04 pm

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I blended Old Fashion Oats, for the flour, added sugar, baking soda, turmeric and cinnamon (the cinnamon to balance the flavor of the turmeric) and water. They turned out tasty.

From Dr. Greger's "How Not to Die":

Why You Should Include Turmeric in Your Daily Diet

In recent years, more than five thousand articles have been published in the medical literature about curcumin, the pigment in turmeric that gives it that bright yellow color. Many of these papers sport impressive-looking diagrams suggesting that curcumin can benefit a multitude of a variety of diseases, and dozens more studies are on the way. 5

We have seen how curcumin may play a role in preventing or treating lung disease, brain disease, and a variety of cancers, including multiple myeloma, colon cancer, and pancreatic cancer. But curcumin has also been shown to help speed recovery after surgery6 and effectively treat rheumatoid arthritis better than the leading drug of choice. 7 It also may be effective in treating osteoarthritis8 and other inflammatory conditions, such as lupus9 and inflammatory bowel disease. 10 In the latest trial for ulcerative colitis, a multicenter, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind study found that more than 50 percent of patients achieved remission within just one month on curcumin compared to none of the patients who received the placebo. 11 If you are as convinced as I am that you should include turmeric in your diet to benefit from its pigment curcumin, the next questions, then, are: how much do you eat, how do you eat it, and what are the risks?

A Quarter Teaspoon of Turmeric Every Day

Turmeric is potent stuff. If I took a sample of your blood and exposed it to an oxidizing chemical, researchers could quantify the damage it caused to the DNA in your blood cells with sophisticated technology that allows them to count the number of breaks in DNA strands. If I then gave you a single pinch of turmeric to eat once a day for a week, redrew your blood, and again exposed your blood cells to the same free radicals, you would see that with the tiny bit of turmeric on board, the number of cells with DNA damage could be cut in half. 12 That’s not mixing turmeric with cells in a petri dish— that’s having you ingest the spice and then measuring the effects in your blood. And this was not some fancy curcumin supplement, not some turmeric extract. It was just the plain spice you can buy at any grocery store. And, the dose was tiny, about one-eighth of a teaspoon.

Now that’s powerful!

The doses of turmeric that have been used in human studies range from less than one-sixteenth of a teaspoon up to nearly two tablespoons a day. 13 Few adverse effects have been reported even at high doses, but the studies typically have lasted only a month or so. We don’t know what long-term effects of high doses there may be. Because turmeric can have such powerful drug-like effects, until we have better safety data, I would not advise anyone to take more than the culinary doses that have a long-standing record of apparent safety. How much is that? Though traditional Indian diets can include up to about a teaspoon of turmeric daily, the average intake in India is closer to a quarter teaspoon a day. 14 So that’s how much I recommend you get as part of your Daily Dozen. How to Eat Turmeric Primitive peoples often used spices in sophisticated ways. For instance, quinine from cinchona bark was used to treat the symptoms of malaria long before the disease was even identified, and the raw ingredients of aspirin have been used as a popular painkiller long before Mr. Friedrich Bayer came along. 15 Over the last twenty-five years, about half of new drug discoveries have come from natural products. 16

There’s a plant in South Asia called adhatoda (adu, meaning “goat,” and thoda, meaning “not touch”— it’s so bitter even the goats won’t eat it). Its leaves are steeped with pepper to make a folk remedy effective for treating asthma. Somehow it was figured out what scientists didn’t discover until 1928: Adding pepper vastly boosted the plant’s antiasthmatic properties. And now we know why. About 5 percent of black pepper by weight is composed of a compound called piperine, which accounts for pepper’s pungent flavor and aroma. But piperine is also a potent inhibitor of drug metabolism. 17 One of the ways your liver gets rid of foreign substances is by making them water soluble so you can pee them out. This black pepper molecule, however, inhibits that process, thereby boosting blood levels of the medicinal compounds in adhatoda— and it can do the same for curcumin in turmeric root.

Within an hour of eating turmeric, curcumin appears in your bloodstream, but only in small traces. Why only scant amounts? Presumably, your liver is actively working to get rid of it. But what if you suppress that elimination process by eating some black pepper? If you consume the same amount of curcumin but add a quarter teaspoon of black pepper, the level of curcumin in your blood shoots up by 2,000 percent. 18 Even just the littlest pinch of pepper, just one-twentieth of a teaspoon, can significantly boost curcumin blood levels. 19 And guess what is a common ingredient in many curry powders besides turmeric? Black pepper. Curry powder in India is also often served with a source of fat, which alone can enhance the bioavailability of curcumin seven- to eightfold. 20 (Unfortunately, traditional knowledge appeared to fail here as to the best source of that fat. Indian cuisine employs a great deal of clarified butter, or ghee, which may explain the country’s relatively high rates of heart disease despite its otherwise relatively healthy diet. 21)

My favorite way to incorporate turmeric is to use fresh turmeric root. Any large Asian market should carry it in the produce aisle. It looks like skinny fingers of gingerroot, but when you snap it open, you are greeted by the most unreal, Day-Glo, fluorescent-orange color. My quarter teaspoon of dried turmeric recommendation translates into about a quarter inch of fresh turmeric root. The roots are about two inches long, cost about ten cents each, and can last for weeks in the fridge or basically forever in the freezer. Every year you can go to the store and buy a twelve-month supply of fresh turmeric for about five dollars.

There’s evidence to suggest that the cooked and raw forms may have different properties. Cooked
turmeric appears to offer better DNA protection, while raw turmeric may have greater anti-inflammatory effects. 22 I enjoy it both ways. I use a grater to add my daily quarter inch into whatever I may be cooking (or right onto a cooked sweet potato), or I throw a raw slice into a smoothie. You probably won’t even taste it. Fresh turmeric has a much more subtle flavor than dried, so it may be an especially good option for those who don’t like turmeric’s taste. You will see it, though. Be careful— it can stain clothing and surfaces. Turmeric may not just make your health golden but your fingertips, as well.

Consuming turmeric with soy may offer a double benefit for osteoarthritis sufferers. 23 Scrambled tofu is the classic turmeric-soy combination, but let me share two of my favorites: one raw and one cooked. You can whip up a pumpkin pie smoothie in less than three minutes. Simply blend a can of pumpkin purée, a handful of frozen cranberries and pitted dates, pumpkin pie spice to taste, a quarter-inch turmeric slice (or quarter-teaspoon of powder), and unsweetened soy milk to reach your preferred consistency.

Another favorite is my pumpkin custard (aka crustless pie). All you need to do is blend one can of pumpkin purée with about ten ounces of silken tofu (the Mori-Nu brand is convenient because it stays fresh without refrigeration), as much pumpkin pie spice as you like, and one to two dozen pitted dates (depending on how much of a sweet tooth you have). Pour into a dish and bake at 350 ° F until cracks appear on the surface. By skipping the piecrust and sticking with a custard, you’re left with vegetables, tofu, spices, and fruit. The more you eat, the healthier you are.

Fresh or powdered, turmeric is a natural flavor fit for Indian and Moroccan cuisines, but I add it to most anything. I find it pairs particularly well with brown rice dishes, lentil soup, and roasted cauliflower. Prepared yellow mustard typically already has turmeric in it for color, but try to find a salt-free variety— one that’s essentially just vinegar, a cruciferous vegetable (mustard seeds), and turmeric. I can’t think of a healthier condiment.

Greger, Michael, MD; Stone, Gene (2015-12-08). How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease (p. 354). Flatiron Books. Kindle Edition.


Aloha, patty
patty
 
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Re: Dollar Pancakes/Blueberries with Turmeric...

Postby Hal » Mon Mar 27, 2017 9:51 pm

Dash of turmeric. Check. Thanks, patty.
Hal
 
Posts: 542
Joined: Sun Jun 28, 2015 9:44 pm


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